what a trip

It must have been a depressing time for St. Augustine residents in December 1763. The gray damp December days surely did not boost the spirits of the residents who boarded ships that carried them to Cuba. They were leaving behind their own homes in St. Augustine. For many of them, they were leaving the town of their birth and where their grandparents and several earlier generations and been born and lived.



In December 1763, six ships carried Spanish evacuees to Cuba following the transfer of Florida to Great Britain. Spain had been on the losing side of the Seven Years War, (usually called the French and Indian War in the United States) and had given up Florida as part of the peace negotiations. British soldiers and administrators had arrived in St. Augustine in July 1763. Spanish residents were given about six months to depart.



The evacuation had begun in April 1763. Families boarded schooners, sloops and brigantines with their trunks and furniture. No doubt many of the evacuees had never sailed on a ship, especially the women. Ships also carried away the weapons that had protected Castillo de San Marcos. The British brought in their own artillery.



Six shiploads of residents departed that December. One ship carried only a dozen evacuees. The Spanish brigantine San Jose y Nuestra Senora del Rosario left port on Dec. 19 with 90 persons, the largest sailing in December.



The "spread sheet" of the departures compiled in Havana in April 1764 by Florida's Spanish governor Melchor Feliu and Juan Elixio de la Puente tell us that on most of the vessels, the passenger list was about half and half children and adults.



Surely every passenger had his or her own tale, but the old records do not provide much of that sort of information. Eighteenth-century documents did not leave us many of the personal interest stories that abound today. Combining many different documents, I was able to piece together a glimpse of one family at the time they boarded the ship bound for Havana. It is probably a representative story.



Juana de Navarro stepped onto the sloop San Antonio in October 1763 probably carrying her five-week-old baby, her ninth child. Her husband Salvador de Porras and her six other surviving children were on board. They left behind their home on St. George Street, which had been the property of Juana's mother and grandmother. They also owned land and buildings on today's Avenida Menendez.



Some version of this story was repeated over and over until Jan. 21, 1764, when the last of the 3,000 Spanish evacuees sailed away from our town. Some of them, including Juana's middle child Catalina would return 20 years later, when Spain regained Florida in 1784.

By SUSAN R. PARKER